By Charlene Macaulay
Residents lodged 74 complaints against Wyndham council with the Victorian Ombudsman, its latest annual report reveals.
The Victorian Ombudsman’s 2018 annual report found that Wyndham ranked 18th out of the 79 Victorian councils for numbers of complaints, with neighbouring Geelong (115 complaints), Maribyrnong (85) and Brimbank (80) councils receiving more complaints over the 2017-18 financial year.
Complaints about local government accounted for 22 per cent of all complaints made to the Ombudsman during the past financial year.
The report found that planning, nuisances, local laws, parking and rates were among chief council service concerns, while conflicts of interest, improper conduct, poor governance and complaint handling were also prominent issues. But the report stressed that the figures did not reflect the number of substantiated complaints made about each council.
“If we do enquire into the complaint, in most cases we would seek to resolve it informally, rather than investigate,” the Ombudsman’s report reads.
“Where a complaint is informally resolved, we do not determine whether the complaint is substantiated.”
Meanwhile, the Local Government Inspectorate, which also released its annual report for the 2017-18 financial year last week, received and assessed 417 complaints and completed 39 investigations against Victorian councils and councillors, but would not break that figure down per local area.
“The Inspectorate does not generally disclose the number of complaints relating to individual municipalities on the basis that a high proportion are unsubstantiated and the statistics provide an incomplete picture of issues and concerns around local government,” Chief Municipal Inspector David Wolf said.
However, the report stated the Inspectorate spent a significant part of the year investigating and concluding major cases, including an investigation into candidates contesting the 2016 Wyndham council elections.
The report into the investigation found that 10 of the 95 Wyndham candidates were considered ‘dummy candidates’, while two candidates interviewed were unaware they had nominated for council. The latter matter remains under active investigation.
